Spend the night at club where Beatles ‘played, partied and slept’

Music fans looking for a fab place to stay can now book a room where the Beatles got their start.

The Casbah Coffee Club in Liverpool was one of the first concert venues to host the band, known as the Fab Four. More than 40 performances were staged at the location in the city’s West Derby neighbourhood. It was opened in 1959 by Mona Best, mother of the group’s first drummer Pete, in the basement of the family home but closed just three years later.

Now it is an Airbnb where fans can “sleep, play and party” like their music idols. Pete Best, 82, told the Liverpool Echo he has “fond memories” of the club and praised its transformation as a “lasting tribute” to the band. He recalled it as a “Shangri-La” for the musicians and said a party was “guaranteed” every Saturday night. “And hence that’s why the unique expression is, ‘The Beatles played here, the Beatles partied here and the Beatles slept here.’”

Rooms will have a “sprinkling” of Beatles memorabilia including photos, posters and wall-mounted guitars, and will be named after John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison. Other suites will honour Best and Stuart Sutcliffe, the first bass guitarist.

The basement has been preserved as a performance space complete with drum kits and “John I’m back” graffiti above the stage. Best’s younger brother Roag, 62, grew up in what is now the McCartney Suite.

He told the paper: “Paul has said one of the things he loved about playing the Casbah was it was like playing a big house party. “And if the band was going to try anything new, it would be at the Casbah because it felt like a safe place.”